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Category Archives: Big ideas

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Something the health gurus don't say about the fatter to thinner thing

I think you’ll pretty much agree that it’s totally crap and unhelpful when thinner people think they should offer advice to their fatter friends on how to fix themselves up. yet thin people often do this. it’s not a cool thing people. or respectful. or even remotely helpful. and I feel I need to say something.

Dear thin people if you really want to be helpful please drop the judgements. and advice giving. totally. anyhow is it worse to be a fatter person or a bit mean-spirited. just asking.

THERE'S AN AGEING STRANGER THING IN MY MIRROR

Stranger things are happening. To me. Literally. A Ms It’s Ageing Time Stranger Thing Person has turned up in my bathroom mirror. Seriously. I’ve freaked out a bit. I don’t know her. And she won’t leave. No matter what I do. It’s all rather startling. A bit of a brutal blow. You know what. Ms It’s Ageing Time Stranger Thing Person. You can f*#k off out of my life. I don’t have time for this. Not now.You see I’ve finally made a sort of peace with myself. Well with my younger self. I’ve gotten a lot of stuff sorted. Patched up the bruised and broken bits. I know myself. More clearly. I’m ready to get on with it. With full on living. Then I’m asked to age. Get old. Gracefully. WTF.

It wasn’t my fault that my childhood was a bit screwed up and I had to become a doctor and study psychiatry to sort it all out. I needed time for all that. Get me the latest anti-aging potions. I’ve got shit to do. Important shit. Really important stuff. So I don’t have time for this gracefully aging nonsense.

Madame Pleasure meets Mr Change.

Madame Pleasure has quite a reputation. You all know what I mean. Those endless warnings of the troubles she’ll bring you. The menacing reminders of what might happen. The dire ditch you are sure to find yourself in. Should you give in. Allow yourself to embrace her sweet silhouette. To snuggle up with her. To feel good.

It’s all quite undeserved. These salutations against her. Against Madame Pleasure.

To Have or to Be is the choice we can make.

Paupers Paris. I found it the other day. It was my first guidebook to Paris. The yellowing pages still promising to show me how to spend more time without spending more francs in the city of light.

Earmarked is that first hotel. The Grand Hotel d’Harcourt.

A one star establishment on 3 boulevard St-Michel. Most importantly it was in the Fifth. Described as a very lively area. Central to everything. Facing the famous St-Michel Fountain. A short walk to the major attractions. It boasted that the rooms were recently ‘redone’ and emphasised ‘with a lift’.

These days there’s a 4 star Great Western Hotel on the site. Their online site says pretty much the same stuff.

Times change. Budgets change. We grow older. But essentially some things stay the same.

To age or not to age is not the right question.

Proust warned me. I didn’t listen. I was younger. I just liked the idea of sitting somewhere by the Seine with his books. It was a romantic notion. Searching for lost time. Contemplating tea and Madeleine’s. Of wasting time. In Paris if possible.

Capturing time

Recently I’ve been reading him again. I’m older now. He is making more sense. About the lost time. And the remembrance of things past. The questions of how to find time. And of how not to waste it.

After all how we spend our moments is in the end how we spend our lives.

I think Proust was talking mindfulness. Only they didn’t call it that back then. There wasn’t a fashion for it.

How to see the First Arrondissemont.

Grand. Glamorous. Gallant. Think of it as the Paris of grand visions. Big ideas. Lofty aspiration.

It was though the lens of my camera that I first truly saw this beating royal heart. Clearly. It made for a perfect last day.

I’m not a morning person. So it was an effort to drag myself from bed. Before the sunrise. I wanted some photographs. With no crowds. And the soft light. Something more personal than postcards. I’d just spent several weeks alone in Paris. I was homeward bound. I felt different. It had been a golden daydream of sorts. I wanted to take some of that home.

On that day as I stared down my lens I learnt something about photography and seeing and Paris. The light was soft and luminous. I had the Louvre gardens. The arched courtyard. The young pyramid. The Palais Royale. The Bruen Columns. The Tuilliere Gardens. All to myself.

The city still sleepy. The Seine so still I could see reflections of myself on the grey-green surface. Paris was there too. Shimmering in the background.

I remember I felt unburdened. Untroubled by worldly concerns. Everything was sort of magnified. Expanded. Enlarged. Inside me I accessed a space that seemed freer. Wilder. More imaginative than usual. My spirits soar upwards to the ancient arches above.

I experienced though the camera lens a way of seeing that was reminiscent of when I gazed at my baby sons all those years ago. I felt very present. In flow even. Later I found my photos to have a quality I’d not seen in them before. I believe now it was a sort of love. The presence of something bigger then myself.

It was a lesson not just in photography but in looking the way an artist looks. In how to see. That’s why I’ve chosen these videos by french artist Felix Aberasturi. He is as you might know a favourite of mine. His images evoke for me something of the experience I’m describing. His art is created overpainting old photos and postcards of Paris. It is his unique vision. Yet at the same time he expresses timeless and classic ideas.

So my suggestion is this. Go on a photo hunt. To uncover the heart of Paris. Wait till your last day. After you feel something about the city. Have experiences to bring along. Go early or late in the day. Let your heart lead.

You might make a list of prompts. Like these. A grand door or portal. Sacred sculptural shapes. Built beauty. Columns against arches. Palatial perfection. A black and white statement. A metro moment. Formal follies in a garden. Golden daydreams. Angels versus Devils. Secrets of the Seine. Stairways to heaven. A flight of fancy.

You get the idea. Take it up a notch. Use imaginings and dreams. Be playful.

Your aim is to capture your own vision. But also to enlarge your view. To imagine immensity for yourself. Find your own expression of beauty. Your own light. To be opened up to other ideas. To difference.

Most of us are not that grand. Or glamorous. Or terribly sophisticated. Our everyday lives are filled with ordinary concerns and struggles. Sometimes sorrows and pain.

When we find ourselves stuck. Caught in a net of the small things. Or even paralysed by bigger griefs. Discontentment . Regrets. We stop dreaming and playing. We lose touch with imagination.

But we all carry within a world that has immeasurable capacity. We are limited only by what we are able imagine to be possible. We need to be reminded of these bigger possibilities.

Paris is a place where the ordinary and the grand rub right up against each other. They exist together. Illuminate each other.

The First Arrondissement offers many moments of pure magnificence. The Louvre and her gardens invite us to open to greatness. To see beyond the everyday. You don’t need to be a history or art geek to uncover this. Just surrender yourself to the experience of a bit of grandeur.

Nourish that potential to be a bigger better version of yourself.

When you are done. When the light is too bright. And Paris is awake. When you are back on the earth. Oh wow.

It’s time to head over to Angelinas. But not into the tea room. You can buy the famous spicy L’Africaine blend of hot chocolate from a take-away kiosk just outside. Take your treat back into the Tuilliere gardens. Find a green metal chair. Settle in. Take your time. Inhale. Drink up. Taste the very opulence you have just seen.

You will experience beautiful visions here in the First Arrondissement. So be inspired to bring home truly gorgeous photographs. Personal mementos of what you experienced.

But also a key. An antidote to feeling small and stuck. A knowing. That to move forward in the face of regret or pain or sorrow you can enlarge the space which you carry them in.

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About Me

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I went to Paris. It was a great big generous gift to myself. Because I wanted it to last I wrote some things down, and I made some little watercolours. And because in my everyday normal life I work as a doctor in mental health I used mindfulness on myself. Guess what.... it's great stuff. I found out that when you go away, its not just about what to see or to have or to know but how you do these things. That the real journey is from your head to your heart and your feet and hands and all your senses get involved along the way! And its all good for you. I realised I'd found a way to go though the muddle of midlife from a sort of madness to a more magical place. And along the way I fell in love with the place they call Paris.
I wanted to tell other women all about it, so I made this blog. Now this is my gift to you. I truly hope you will be inspired to make your own Paris Story come true.